Simple but Not Easy Quotes

“One should invest in equities, which are volatile, only with a long-term perspective, and in the most volatile of equities with an especially long-term perspective – 5 years or more – and only with money which one can be sure of not needing in the next few years. It also matters a great deal how investors react after a 90% fall. Something so devastating can lead to completely the wrong decision. It is easy to say, when your $1,000 has turned into $100, “I can’t take any more of this. I would rather be sure of my $100 than risk losing that too.” Selling at the bottom is a common fault, not surprisingly because the bottom, in a share price, is the moment of maximum fear. If the fall is 90% the fear is acute. Perhaps the best thing to be, after a 90% fall, is asleep.”
― Oldfield Richard, Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing

“One should invest in equities, which are volatile, only with a long-term perspective, and in the most volatile of equities with an especially long-term perspective – 5 years or more – and only with money which one can be sure of not needing in the next few years. It also matters a great deal how investors react after a 90% fall. Something so devastating can lead to completely the wrong decision. It is easy to say, when your $1,000 has turned into $100, “I can’t take any more of this. I would rather be sure of my $100 than risk losing that too.” Selling at the bottom is a common fault, not surprisingly because the bottom, in a share price, is the moment of maximum fear. If the fall is 90% the fear is acute.”
― Oldfield Richard, Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing

“My family motto used to be vulnere viresco – through my wound I grow strong. This was a typical dog-Latin pun on our name: an old field, ploughed up and resown, grows a crop again and flourishes. But in India in the early 1800s an aggrieved employee tried to murder my great, great grandfather with a sword. He was wounded in the back and lost two fingers. Thereafter he could not bear the motto and changed it to something much duller. Vulnere viresco is a perfect motto for an investment manager. That people learn from their mistakes is a truism.”
― Oldfield Richard, Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing

“Another person in the business has told me “I have always thought that investing is something to do, rather than to talk about.” Investment involves the fluctuating ownership from a sedentary position of what were once pieces of paper and have now been virtualised so that they are no more than entries in some faceless computer records. It is an activity which can seem unreal.”
― Oldfield Richard, Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing

“The great advantage of the property-centred policy was that in a panic property was very difficult to sell. The British kept their property because they could not do otherwise, and prices always recovered. They were prevented by the illiquidity of property from selling at the bottom.”
― Richard Oldfield, Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing

“A long-term temperament as well as long-term circumstances A Japanese man went into a bank to change some Japanese notes into sterling. He was surprised at how little he got. “Please explain,” he said to the cashier. “Yesterday I was changing same yen for sterling and I received many more sterling. Why is this?” The cashier shrugged his shoulders. “Fluctuations,” he explained. The Japanese man was aghast. “And fluck you bloody Europeans too,” he responded, grabbed the notes, and walked out. Fluctuations matter if the money could be needed soon. Money invested in equities must not be money which will be wanted in a year or two, or might be urgently wanted at any time, because there is a fair chance that the moment when it is needed will be a bad one for the stock market and the investor will therefore be selling at low prices. If investors think they might need the money soon, the message is clearly stay away: the chance of a minus return is just too great. Even if investors are in a position to allocate a fair amount to equities, they should not necessarily do so. It is not enough that the circumstances are right. Investors need to be temperamentally inclined to the sort of long-term investment which equities are. Long-termness must be subjective as well as objective. The fact that the circumstances of a particular investor might objectively lead to a certain viewpoint does not mean that he or she necessarily has that viewpoint. A baby is in an objective position to take a long-term view, but will not actually look beyond the next feeding-time.”
― Richard Oldfield, Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing

“A share looks cheap; you buy it; it goes down and looks cheaper; you buy more; it goes down and down, getting cheaper and cheaper, until it reaches what practitioners call euphemistically the ultimate cheapness – zero. This is what is generally called the value trap.”
― Richard Oldfield, Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing

“different meanings of safety to different investors. For someone needing a lump of money in a year’s time, the only safe investment is a cash deposit or a short-term government bond. For someone with no imminent need of the money and a desire to accumulate capital and increase purchasing power in the long-term, it may be safer to invest in equities – volatile but with the historic and likely future characteristic of a high return after inflation – than to put money on deposit with the risk that over the years the real value of the investment will be eroded by inflation.”
― Richard Oldfield, Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing

“One should invest in equities, which are volatile, only with a long-term perspective, and in the most volatile of equities with an especially long-term perspective – 5 years or more – and only with money which one can be sure of not needing in the next few years.”
― Richard Oldfield, Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing